The debate about free software vs. proprietary software is nothing but the same debate maintained during the adoption of any new social norm. The fact that free software is taking over proprietary software means we are soon reaching social maturity in the subject. While in the past our ancestors found slavery socially acceptable, it is indeed absolutely unacceptable today. We are now socially mature in the subject.

Most social processes take very long times, decades or even centuries to reach an overall maturity. In my opinion, this is due to long years of culture and limitations imposed by religions. While the slavery example is a bit extreme, we found today other topics that have not yet reached an overall maturity, such as (just to cite a few) women's rights, homosexuality, non-discrimination, or even human rights in general. Those topics still have partial or even no acceptance at all in some places of this world.

When it comes to free software, instead, due to the lack of religious links, the short age of technology and its rapid advance, we see a much faster social maturity process. It was only two and a half decades ago when Richard Stallman started promoting the use of free software. While we still have a long way to go, the progress reached in less than three decades is by far superior than any other social maturity progress.

Companies like Microsoft have created great damage to our society, by making users prisioners of a technology. This was possible by imposing restrictions on everyone's computers, by forcing users to save their information on closed formats, by forcing them to upgrade to new versions, and by preventing them from utilizing different software platforms. In few words, what they have done was to make users prisoners of their own technology, for the sole purpose of obtaining economic benefits.

Governments, due to lack of knowledge in the specific subject at the time in some cases, and due to plain corruption in other cases, have opened their doors for companies like Microsoft to dominate their technology infrastructure. However, when the general knowledge in the subject was more extent, meaning that it was not possible to fight free software with ignorance, companies like Microsoft starting a legal battlefront, by filing ridiculous software patents that would prevent any further innovation from other developers, which in addition gave them the opportunity to start a legal war of terror against free software. Unfortunately, our governments also allowed that.

As time passes, and as we grow more mature in the subject, software patents, closed information formats and proprietary software in general is more and more difficult to sustain. From the economical perspective, the vast offer of free software today makes it almost impossible for any non-free software initiative to survive. In addition, our governments now begin to consider the use of free software as the only way to ensure sovereignty over the technology infrastructure, and as a way to avoid discrimination of their citizens in virtue of the technology they choose.

As history tell us, reason, in the long run, always prevails. If you are still a prisoner of proprietary software, you might be interested in getting the TRUE facts about free software

These are just some of the main projects in which I was involved in the last few years

Linux Espanol is a Spanish non-profit organization, commited to promoting free software in Spain and Latin America, and to protect the Linux trademark in the Spanish territory. Among our recent achievements, we stopped an abusive advertisement Microsoft was publishing in Google, misdirecting users searching the term Linux to their website. We are currently working hard in the Observatorio de Neutralidad Tecnologica, an observatory dedicated to ensure the technological neutrality in all Spanish Public Administrations.

The "Observatorio de Neutralidad Tecnologica" started with a report presented before the "Defensor del Pueblo", a government agency dedicated to offer support to Spanish habitants. The Observatorio is committed to ensuring the technological neutrality in the Spanish Administration. Through claims received by users via Internet, and with a proactive web spider, we detect and report any incidents that would threat the technological neutrality in Spain. Today, the Observatory looks at all Ministries, sub-delegations, government, regional and municipal institutions.

Linux Español is a web forum that provides GNU/Linux support to Spanish speaking users. This was the first project I started in Spain, which led to forming the Linux Espanol Organization. This forum contains precious information about GNU/Linux and helps thousands of visitors every day.

LinEspa is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian. It started as a need expressed by thousands of users in our Forum. LinEspa is a lightweight distribution, targeted for users with low-end computers. It features the XFCE desktop environment and a live CD, multimedia capabilities, a powerful Office suite, photo editors, etc.

Espontaneas is an area of free collective creation in which users can post photos and videos directly from a mobile phone, or from any computer. Publishing photos on espontaneas, only requires a mobile phone with camera and MMS (multimedia messaging) or e-mail (GPRS) support, or simply any computer connected to the Internet. The service is free to the user, however, the mobile phone operator might charge additionally for the network utilization. The license of espontaneas provides an abdication to entities of copyright management and an incompatibility with DRM-protected media.